We were lucky to catch up with Alejandro Brown recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alejandro, appreciate you joining us today. Do you manage your own social media?
The saying goes if you want something done right, do it yourself and that couldn’t be more accurate when describing social media for I-70 Things. For the brand, social media is the best way to keep up with the what, where, and why. In order to accomplish this correctly a personal touch from someone who understands our beats, I-70 and the Colorado outdoors, is required. Furthermore, our experience with different agencies has been cookie cutter and we are very different from most large accounts. We don’t schedule posts, we read and answer our dms, we respond to comments, and if there’s breaking news we try to verify and post to get the word out on whatever it may be. This is why we manage our social media in-house because we want to provide the best experience for our community and we haven’t found an agency that understands our communities needs better than us.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
Hi, I’m Alejandro Brown and I’m the Founder/Owner of I-70 Things. My background is in digital marketing, community building, and partnerships. I particularly enjoy working with startups because of the many hats you have to wear. I call Colorado home.
I-70 Things is an outdoor media brand that is centered around the travel and activities that take place around I-70 in Colorado. Interstate 70 is a major US highway that goes from Maryland to Utah, but the fascinating part is the section in Colorado. I-70 cuts through the Rocky Mountains in the Centennial State and this creates an environment of unpredictable weather, natural disasters, steep grades, and lots of road closures.
At I-70 Things we pride ourselves in providing a transparent approach to reporting on travel alerts, weather updates, and natural disasters all while keeping it relatable and entertaining. Our goal is to help anyone traveling to be safe and have the best understanding of how that drive may go that day. For example, ski traffic in the winter can be time-consuming. If we know there’s a pileup or a road closure we hope to give you a heads up so that you aren’t stuck on the highway in park for hours on end.
As we grow we have partnered up with many different Colorado brand’s mainly within the outdoor industry. This has been a great experience for the parties involved and speaks volumes to the creativity of Colorado brands. One brand we particularly enjoy working with is Outlaw, a new brand of light beer brewed by Tivoli Brewing here in Denver, Colorado. We also host events, such as our annual highway clean up with Mayor Parker the Snow Dog. As the I-70 Things Community continues to grow, we’d love to pursue more collaboration opportunities within Colorado and the outdoor industry.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
Building a large social media presence is a goal for many brands. Some businesses have the funds to make this happen in a short period of time, others do not. We didn’t have the means to spend any money on social media, so we chose an organic approach. The four key things that lead us to succeed in growing a large community were content, consistency, persistence, and understanding our target audience extremely well.
Many brands state they are building a community, but very few actually do. Most build an audience, which is impersonal. I believe the reason for this is because many brands aren’t trying to build a community, but instead are trying to build a customer base. A community is built by giving, giving, giving. This means that as a brand you must provide a massive amount of value in order to have people join your community and stay. I’m proud of the I-70 Things community because together we all make traveling in Colorado a fun, but safer experience.
Lastly, brands need to understand the platform’s algorithm. What you do on one social media platform rarely directly translates to the same strategies on another. This is something many small businesses don’t understand. You must play by the rules of that specific platform. Another key point is don’t take shortcuts. This just hurts you in the long run and doesn’t lead to success.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
Experimenting in the early stages of your business can pay off greatly in the long run. Fail early and fail fast. In order to see what works multiple strategies must be deployed. A few key questions you want answered from these strategies are what works best, what helps you gain traction, and where to double down. Since you don’t have much data to figure this out, testing different strategies can be difficult, but when you find one or a few that work, focus on those. In the case of I-70 Things, we were more of an entertainment account when we first started, but once we started covering breaking news our community, engagement, and virality exploded. Now we do our best to have a balance between entertainment and news in order to best provide for our communities needs and interests.
Contact Info:
- Website: i70things.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/i70things/
- Facebook: facebook.com/i70things/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alejandro-brown/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLinFbjAG8puGUih9kUBxIg
- Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@i70things
Image Credits
Me and the Dog – Credit goes to Mayor Parker the Snow Dog